WASHINGTON – Ahead of the Senate’s vote on the nomination of Emil Bove to be United States Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) released an exhaustive overview of his work to thoroughly vet Bove’s nomination in light of three whistleblower allegations made against the nominee.
In a speech on the Senate floor, Grassley outlined how his team ran into challenges while attempting to review each whistleblower disclosure in good faith: “any assertion that I or my staff was uninterested in the evidence is false.”
Grassley is a co-founder and co-chair of the Senate Whistleblower Protection Caucus.
Bove’s letter to the committee regarding the most recent whistleblower allegations is HERE.
Video and a transcript of Grassley’s floor remarks is below.
Prepared Floor Remarks by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee
“The Nomination of Emil Bove”
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Soon, this body will proceed to a final vote on the nomination of Emil Bove to be a judge on the Third Circuit. As I said in my statements in Committee multiple times, I support the nomination of Mr. Bove. He has a strong legal background and has served his country honorably. I believe he will be a diligent, capable, and fair jurist. My Republican colleagues on Committee agreed, and that’s why he was reported out of Committee with every Republican supporting his nomination.
It’s no surprise to anyone who’s followed this nomination that I have serious concerns with how my Democratic colleagues have conducted themselves. The vicious rhetoric, unfair accusations and abuse directed at Mr. Bove by some on this Committee has crossed the line. I wish I could say that this posture has been limited to just this nomination, but unfortunately, it appears to be a pattern.
Since the very beginning of this Congress, Democrats have engaged in a relentless obstruction campaign for nearly every one of President Trump’s nominees. Their playbook has included maximum procedural obstruction, unfair media attacks, repeated attempts to allege misconduct and demands for delayed consideration, records and investigations.
This Congress alone, Democrats have sent at least 26 letters to 17 agencies or parties demanding records, delays or investigations into President Trump’s nominees just in the Judiciary Committee. Like clockwork, just before a hearing or vote, we get another breathless accusation that one of President Trump’s nominees needs to be investigated.
I’m afraid that what we’ve seen recently on the Bove nomination has been more of the same. My Democratic colleagues have tried to weaponize my respect for whistleblowers and the whistleblowing process against me and against Mr. Bove, and I’m going to set the record straight.
I take whistleblower complaints very seriously. During both Republican and Democratic administrations, I have spent over four decades defending patriotic whistleblowers.
My conduct in defending whistleblowers and running bipartisan investigations stands in stark contrast to the conduct of my Democratic colleagues.
During the first Trump administration, I defended the Ukraine whistleblower’s use of the whistleblower process—despite serious concerns about the substance of his complaint.
When I was last Chairman, I interviewed Donald Trump Jr. and other Republicans as part of my bipartisan investigation into alleged Russian collusion—conducted through the Senate Judiciary Committee.
But when it came to the Biden family and his Administration, despite serious allegations and overwhelming evidence of misconduct, Democrats made no effort to investigate or conduct similar interviews. In fact, they worked hard to thwart any attempt at oversight.
These weren’t fringe claims—they involved potential crimes squarely within the Judiciary Committee’s jurisdiction.
This administration has said Mr. Reuvini isn’t a whistleblower. I’ve publicly disagreed with that position.
That’s the opposite posture my Democratic colleagues took with the IRS whistleblowers who blew the whistle on the Biden administration. My Democratic colleagues tried to destroy them and used the press to falsely claim they weren’t whistleblowers.
No one can say that I don’t take whistleblower complaints seriously, or that I don’t investigate allegations in good faith. I’ve always said that my door is open to whistleblowers, and my efforts regarding the Bove nomination show this is true.
Mr. Reuveni first made allegations against Mr. Bove the morning before his nomination hearing. The allegations broke in a New York Times story, and the paper gleefully ran the unvetted accusations without so much as giving the Justice Department or the nominee the opportunity to respond.
The Deputy Attorney General flatly denied the allegations in a public statement, and the nominee denied them under oath both in the hearing and in response to written questions.
Then, my Democratic colleagues received additional records from the whistleblower on July 1 and July 7 but hid them from Republicans. I didn’t receive them until July 10—the same day that Mr. Bove was scheduled for his first markup.
The coordinated media strategy involved a New York Times exclusive about the files, and a Democratic press release containing a misleading summary of the documents—all designed to smear Mr. Bove.
This timeline raises serious concerns, and it’s legitimate to raise them as a major problem. If my Democratic colleagues wanted to investigate allegations, they should have come to me and we could have vetted the allegations in good faith, together. They didn’t want this. They wanted to run a one-sided media campaign.
Regardless, I still did my job and investigated.
My staff reviewed the disclosures document-by-document and analyzed the facts. The result? Almost none of the material references Mr. Bove at all. More concerningly, the Democrat summary grossly mischaracterized the documents it purported to summarize. In short, the documents didn’t say what Democrats say they did.
My staff also interviewed multiple people who were present for the March 14 meeting described in the whistleblower disclosure. Four separate people other than Mr. Bove who were present in the meeting told us the following:
There was never any directive to ignore a court order; and
Each of them left the meeting with the understanding that the Justice Department would aggressively litigate, but would follow court orders.
My staff also spoke to numerous other individuals, including many current or former Justice Department employees, who wanted to share information about the Bove nomination. All told, my staff interviewed or spoke with more than a dozen individuals who came forward to discuss the Bove nomination.
With respect to the initial whistleblower allegations, even if you accept most of the claims as true, there’s no scandal. Government lawyers aggressively litigating and interpreting court orders isn’t misconduct—it’s what lawyers do.
Concerningly, the Minority repeatedly recast discussion of litigation strategy as wrongdoing, even discussions that reflected the government’s official litigation positions, some of which prevailed on appeal.
The whistleblower alleged misconduct—but ten days after the key event he describes, he signed a brief stating—without qualification—that “the Government has complied with the Court’s orders in this case.”
If he believed the Department defied court orders, why sign a brief as an officer of the court saying it had complied?
During the hearing, Mr. Bove firmly denied the allegations. He testified under oath: “I did not advise any Justice Department attorney to violate court orders.”
Recent public reporting backs his account. Months before the whistleblower came forward, his former supervisor wrote in a letter that Mr. Bove advised our team that we must avoid a court order halting an upcoming operation to implement the Act at all costs. This statement confirms Mr. Bove advised his team to avoid triggering a court order, not defy one—that’s consistent with his testimony.
That was the initial allegation, but now, on the eve of Mr. Bove’s final vote, the Democrats and their media allies have launched yet another salvo against Mr. Bove.
On Friday, we learned from social media that two other whistleblowers allegedly have derogatory information about Mr. Bove.
One whistleblower said that they’ve filed a complaint with the Inspector General. My staff requested the complaint and to speak with the whistleblower. Their requests were declined.
Another group, called Justice Connection, publicly alleged that a whistleblower has evidence that Bove wasn’t truthful in his hearing, and that the whistleblower “has tried to share info with Republican senators for weeks and they haven't responded.”
To the extent that anyone is suggesting that I haven’t been willing to receive and consider relevant evidence—this is plainly false. I’m the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and I represent Republicans on this nomination. Regarding this whistleblower, my office wasn’t proactively approached.
Indeed, since we saw these new reports on Friday, my staff proactively – and repeatedly – reached out to the whistleblower’s lawyers, asking to see the evidence that they apparently had already shared with multiple Democrats and the media.
My staff assured them that we would review the evidence in good faith, but all weekend, my staff was stonewalled and given the runaround. Any assertion that I or my staff was uninterested in the evidence is false.
It wasn’t until Monday morning that my staff received any information. Even then, it was bits and pieces of information created by the lawyers, not original information. My staff tried over and over to get all the information, only to be rejected.
My staff was not shown the underlying transcript of the meeting until this morning. They were shown what was represented to be a verbatim transcript of a meeting, but we still didn’t get access to the underlying source.
So, what did I do? I followed my usual process and asked Mr. Bove to respond to the allegations that his testimony was inconsistent with the evidence presented. And he sent me a letter doing just that. I’ll plan to make it public.
In his letter, Mr. Bove flatly denies the allegation that he misled the Committee. He explained that he testified truthfully in response to “compound yes/no questions that sought to attribute words to me that I did not use during the February 14, 2025 video meeting.” He also responds to the attacks on his character and rejects the allegations against him.
Viewed in light of the transcript, Bove’s responses to compound, hostile questions about specific words used a meeting that happened months before his hearing do not, to me, indicate deliberately false or misleading testimony.
And more importantly, the substance of the meeting itself does not reflect misconduct. It reflected a sympathetic tone during a turbulent time, and appropriately characterizes the role of a Justice Department attorney. In the meeting, Mr. Bove specifically acknowledges that being a Justice Department Attorney means “Following orders from the President and from the Attorney General, unless we view them as unlawful or unethical.” He apologized to the attorneys present for the tension and told them, “I don’t want to put pressure on you.”
This context is important.
I’m also curious at my Democratic colleagues’ newfound interest in candor to the Committee. During the last administration, Kristen Clarke unequivocally perjured herself before the Judiciary Committee in response to written questions.
When the information came to light after her confirmation, Democrats closed ranks and refused to join Republicans in their call to hold her accountable. Democrats likewise expressed no interest in evaluating the misleading or inconsistent testimony from numerous other Biden appointees.
When this Committee considered the nomination of Justice Kavanaugh, I criticized the tactics the Democrats employed.
I said:
“The Ranking Member sat on these allegations for nearly seven weeks, only to reveal them at the eleventh hour when it appeared Judge Kavanaugh was headed towards confirmation.”
With respect to the Bove nomination, as with other nominees this Congress, Democrats appear to have dusted off the playbook they devised against Justice Kavanaugh. They hid allegedly relevant information until a politically opportune time, and then used it as an ambush to hurt the nominee.
As I said about the Democrats conduct during Director Patel’s nomination:
“This is becoming a pattern, and I will not facilitate a campaign to undermine the results of the election by delaying the consideration of nominees.”
If anyone, including my colleagues, has information regarding a nominee that they believe is relevant to their fitness for office, I expect them to share it with me in a timely and candid manner so that the allegations can be fairly vetted. My door is always open to whistleblowers, and while I may not always agree with someone else’s conclusion, I’ll always fairly consider any information brought to my office.
My message to the three whistleblowers is this: just because I may disagree with the conclusions in a whistleblower disclosure, it doesn’t mean that I don’t support a whistleblower’s right to come forward.
Whether I agree or disagree with a whistleblower, I’ll defend whistleblower rights.
Reasonable minds can differ. And when I direct my staff to allocate resources away from other ongoing whistleblower projects to handle situations like Bove, their efforts ought to be respected and given good faith treatment.
But eleventh-hour media smears by my colleagues based on information that was hidden from the Committee are unacceptable, and I won’t stand for it as a delay and obstruction tactic.
This tactic didn’t work against Justice Kavanaugh, and it won’t work against Mr. Bove.
I look forward to supporting Mr. Bove and urge all of my colleagues to do the same.
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